Because I loved Africa and because I still love Africa I've decided to become a professional
hunter.
This came as a game changer, a game changer, an opportunity of my life and I had to grab
it.
So you want to be a Professional Hunter?
Well you'll spend the next 18 months learning cool stuff like this:
how to set up a leopard bait, conduct autopsies, build rifle-mount muscle memory, understand
African ecology, shoot big bore rifles and being put under intense pressure
To pass the course these guys have to do 50 approaches on bull elephants.
It's important they get up close and personal with dangerous game.
How else are you really going to understand them, read their body language, and anticipate
when things are about to get “interesting”?
The PH course at the Southern African Wildlife College is open to all.
Max is from France, Brighton is from Zimbabwe, and Keiron is from the UK.
He's doing the shorter ‘field guide course’ as part of a gap year.
Its one thing to go and sit in the classroom and in a lecture theatre learning about these
things, but to actually be here in the bush and be able to go out and see a heard of buffalo.
And stand 10 meters away from them and have them all pressed up against you like that,
it's something you don't get in England or in an lecture theatre.
So its a good place to be.
What feeds the fire?
The department is run by Dr Kevin Robertson, author of The Perfect Shot.
And if you open up a carcass that has died of anthrax you will contaminate that area
for 50 years.
So if you see blood coming out all of their natural openings.
You never open that animal up.
As a vet and a hunter Dr Robertson brings a wealth of experience to the course.
They have 2 classrooms, the orthodox one and this one, also known as the Kruger National
park.
No school day is ever the same.
We join Kevin and fellow lecturer Peter explaining how to make sure the impala haunch from this
morning's autopsy should be hung correctly to tempt a leopard.
Leopard's are basically lazy animals.
They prefer to walk in the road rather than walk through the crop especially if there
is a bit of dew on the grass, they don't like to get their feet wet.
So what we are going to do, we are dragging some guts and we are going to drag it so this
leopard walking along the road will pick up the scent.
And he will start following it, Always drag towards the bait never away from it.
When we get to the tree we will walk between the drainage line and we walk a couple of
hundred metres down and down towards this tree.
Drag so we have like a star formation coming towards the tree and in that tree will be
half an impala.
We only get about 6 or 7 a year so every opportunity we get an impala we make sure we utilise it
to its full extent.
We get our students to climb the tree, we are going to wire the body to the tree and
then we will drag from there.
The leopard will be standing on this dead branch and he's going to reach down and grab
the impala, take a few bites then when we looks up the impala will sink down again and
it will sort of keep the leopard occupied.
So you want to keep the leopard occupied you don't want to make it too easy for him to
feed.
And thats when he's preoccupied with feeding he doesn't look at you sitting in your blind
somewhere.
So they are just covering it so the vultures don't see it.
They'll spot it from about a mile high and then they'll just come and try and eat it.
And also the leaves will protect it to stop it from drying out too quickly.
And what you do now as you come down, you just where you've been touching now you just
smear the guy content on it.
Cause you want the leopard to come in the tree and smell humans on top of the tree.
The students make plenty of mistakes.
It is just one of the many skills they will need to grasp to fulfil their complex roles
as professional hunters.
People need to understand that what we do it is for them.
If they want to see black rhino and wild rhino in 20 years time then it depends on us.
I think they need to understand that what we are doing is for them.
We are not killing for the pleasure of killing we are killing because we want to see lions
in 2100.
It's not like we just wake up and start shooting.
We are professional hunter, its not like that, no.
I mean there are certain ways and system that you work with.
Certain quotas that get to be approved by the government.
So when the government says that 100 elephants that need to be hunted this year, well, thats
what we work with.
We are now of to investigate what is left of a lions breakfast.
The class disturbed him a couple of days ago.
We were here on Tuesday this week and we saw some vultures in the tree.So we got out to
have a look and we just stuck our head over that ant hill and a big ginger maned lion
stuck his head out of a bush and looked at use.
And gave a warning growl and backed off.
Then we drove a bit further and we could see a lion lying in this area.
So we've just come back now as we wanted to see what the lions have killed.
There were lots of buffalo in the area so I suspect its a buffalo.
We will just go and have a look to see what it is.
This is the remains content of the buffalo.
They don't eat that but the hyenas have eaten up everything else that is left behind.
So we have a young bull.
Fantastic, right pick up that jaw bone there.
This is ideal so what we'll do now, this is the lower jaw and we'll take the third molar.
This is the third tooth from the back, which is this tooth here.
So we will measure the crown, where the enamel starts.
Which is there to there, that will be one measurement, and from there to there will
be the second measurement.
We'll get 8 measurements.
We will get an average and we will plot it on a graph and we will get the age of this
buffalo in years.
So let's see if we can get this head off then guys.
This time of the year as the water is quite limited, the hearts are massive, the one we
saw this morning must have been a couple of hundred.
And this one is definitely 3 or 400.
So what they'll do, the lions will just push them and anything that lags they'll come in
and wreck him.
But what is quite interesting if you come in and look at this carcass of the buffalo
you see the ribs of a buffalo almost overlap.
So if you're hunting buffalo and from a side on shot.
invariably you have to shoot through a rib.
The bullet will go through skin then it will go through for muscle then it will go through
some rib to get into the thorasic cavity.
These are really hard, see this is a young bull but when the bull gets much older his
ribs get much broader and they get a bit thicker as well.
This is what we call a thorasic index, so when a buffalo is looking at you.
That is your aiming point.
But if you shoot off-centre on the frontal shot what happens to the bullet hits and gets
deflected round the ribs and goes into the abdomen.
So quite often on a frontal shot the buffalo runs off.
So you're tracking the buffalo and you'll find blood in the dung and you'll say you've
gut shot it.
And they'll say how is it possible to gut shoot a buffalo from the front.
And the reason for that is of this rib shape.
If you shoot it through the thorasic indent, which is this little hole, its very deadly.
But, if you're slightly off centre the bullet hits there and just deflects round this continuous
bony shield.
And it just runs round there and it goes into the abdomen.
It's not often a college tutor finds it necessary to carry a big bore rifle over his shoulder
but out here there's plenty of good reasons.
Pete has spotted lion prints
You can see how he picks ups his foot and he is putting it down.
This guy is walking very slow.
You can see he is almost registering which is....lions don't normally register but this
guy is ambling along.
You can see theres the front foot and this is the back foot actually on top of front
foot over there.
To show how fresh they are Kevin gets Max to blow across them – they're fragile and
will soon be lost in the wind.
Pete tracks them and we end up finding two very beaten-up old males lions about nine
years old.
This is a displaced coalition, so those were dominant pride males but they've lost their
territory.
So look at that guys, he's blind in one eye.
He's got a wound on his leg and both, that front guy was limping as well.
Lions are such magnificent animals but when their time has passed they fall of the bus
very quickly.
Because when they're a pride male, the lions and lionesses do most of the killing.
so their job is do defend the territory, and to breed.
So they do a little but they don't kill much.
So they become old, they become unfit, they start slowing down they get arthritis.
They become old men and now all of a sudden the old men have now lost, been kicked out
of their house.
So they have got to cook for themselves now.
They have to buy their own groceries now.
And they havent got any money to buy their groceries with, so they start scavenging,
they start begging.
But from a hunting perspective these are the perfect lions to hunt.
They've done their job, they've bred, they've passed their genes on.
And I would rather get a swift bullet rather than starve to death.
Take me a long time to starve to death.
But These are the ones that become dangerous – resorting to scavenging, looking for easy
meals which often can include humans.
I mean we had a situation in one of our exams, in the valley, one of our students was taken
out of their tent and killed and eaten by a lion on the examination.
And it was the same thing, same situation.
Old lion like this, starving to death...lions are beautiful magnificent animals when they
are in their prime.
But when they lose that prime then they fall of the bus really quickly.
As Kevin says, Africa is a cruel place and they will probably starve to death within
the next few months, which is the strongest argument for hunting a big cat like this.
The thousands of dollars it would raise would pay for more high security fencing, patrols
and, ultimately, more endangered animals being protected.
As part of the PH course students have to learn to shoot.
Most of them have no rifle experience so they start with a pipe.
They need to carry these pipes with them everywhere.
If they point the red end in the wrong direction or leave it lying against a tree it's forfeit
time.
They now have to exercise with the pipe full of concrete.
When they need to shoot they will have to shoot either in self defence of themselves,
their trackers, or their client.
And they're not going to have a lot of time.
Whether its a shot coming towards them or maybe a wounded animal running away from them.
So... their sight acquisition and how their rifle is going to get into their shoulder
needs to be good so these pipes that we have, they are about 5kilograms each.
So it's very close to what a rifle would be.
And we teach them not just the shooting and the mounting but its also a continuous awareness
of where the point their rifle.
Rifle safety, looking after their gun and all that kind of stuff.
that we are now drilling into them.
And some of the sys have never shot before so we are doing this.
And the guys that have shot before they also get something good out of it.
Another problem that they need to overcome is the skill of using a rifle scope.
Again, some students find this tough.
Aimpoint has helped deal with the stumbling block.
With both eyes open on the target, the class’s end goal, is a lot clearer.
The Aimpoint units are just part of the involvement by the Swedish company.
The company also helps fund part of this PH course.
Aimpoint president Lennart is here for the first time to experience it for himself.
Educating professional hunters in the way the Southern African Wildlife College does,
I think is admirable.
It is something that should happen in a lot more places.
But their education it is extensive and its not like you're coming in and you leave two
weeks later with a PH permit.
You have to go through a very very deep education, in every way way, a lot of tests that you
have to pass to get your exam at the end.
And I think that is very very good.
So after all that you have to be tempted to train to be a PH.
If nothing else, it's going to look real cool on your CV - no matter where you come from.
And as the Rand is so weak at the moment, the 18-month course costs about the same as
one year at university in the UK: about £9,000 or US$12,000 - including meals.
or more information about the college go to WildlifeCollege.org.za and for more information
about Aimpoint go to Aimpoint.com